I really wish Bâ gave Aissatou more of a voice in the novel – besides her brilliant, fierce break-up letter to Mawdo, her ex-husband. They shared the same plight, but each dealt with the fragmenting of their family units differently – Ramatoulaye stayed and endured, while Aissatou moved towards complete independence and advanced in her career. They were best friends/basically sisters. As a Dentist, these peculiarities in teeth alignment being equivalent to promiscuity and character of potential suitors was hilarious and fascinating to me!Īfter re-reading this classic, I’ve been over-thinking the friendship Ramatoulaye and Aissatou shared. I looooved how Ramatoulaye’s mother judged her daughter’s suitors by their teeth! According to Ramatoulaye’s mother, the wide gap between Modou’s upper incisors was a sign of ‘the primacy of sensuality in the individual’ Closely set teeth (of Daouda, one of Ramatoulaye’s suitors) won her mother’s confidence. Senegalese patriarchy, Islam, the male ego, mid-life crisis, greed, loneliness, mother-daughter relationships, feminism, sisterhood, courage vs cowardice, poverty, modernity vs tradition, colonialism, death, misogyny and family customs, all take center stage in So Long a Letter. I recently re-read this classic 10 years later and I still give the book the same rating this time around, because of the poignant writing. The first time I read this classic, it was assigned reading for an Anthropology class I took when I was a junior in college, back in 2011. Ramatoulaye hopes for a world where the best of old customs and new freedom can be combined.Ĭonsidered a classic of contemporary African women’s literature, So Long a Letter is a must-read for anyone interested in African literature and the passage from colonialism to modernism in a Muslim country.Įverybody and their grandma has read So Long A Letter. Angered by the traditions that allow polygyny, they inhabit a social milieu dominated by attitudes and values that deny them status equal to men. This semi-autobiographical account is a perceptive testimony to the plight of educated and articulate Muslim women.
Addressed to a lifelong friend, Aissatou, it is a record of Ramatoulaye’s emotional struggle for survival after her husband betrayed their marriage by taking a second wife.
The brief narrative, written as an extended letter, is a sequence of reminiscences-some wistful, some bitter-recounted by recently widowed Senegalese schoolteacher Ramatoulaye Fall. Written by award-winning African novelist Mariama Ba and translated from the original French, So Long a Letter has been recognized as one of Africa’s 100 Best Books of the 20th Century.
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